“By now, Americans with a modicum of cerebral alacrity have a sense of the attitude among Washington State Democrats toward the immutable right of the people to keep their earnings. You all witnessed the despicable Jim McDermott’s intimidating verbal assaults, leveled at conservative property owners, during the House committee hearing on the den of iniquity and vice that is the Internal Revenue Service. For what is the seeking of ‘tax-exempt status’ if not a plea, directed at our overlords who art in D.C., to keep more of what is rightfully ours?

What Edmund Burke said about the House of Commons in his day applies in spades to a House packed with the likes of Rep. Jim McDermott D-Wash. ‘Designed as a control for the people,’ the House has become a control ‘upon the people.’

And the trend extends to local governments, gone from which are the old-fashioned county governors, once devoted to low taxes and careful spending.

Here goes.

While trying to be neighborly, I made the mistake of being less than reverential about my property taxes in ‘The Evergreen State,’ and in particular, the 51.4 percent appropriated for ‘State and Local Schools.’

I was informed in high decibels that my husband and I, hardworking both, ought to thank our lucky stars for this valuable index—thousands paid per year toward ‘State and Local Schools’—for without it we’d be clueless about … the value of our home. (If anything, taxes distort market prices. But more about the curious fallacy of the benevolent property tax, as a price signal in the housing market, in a follow-up column.)

Yes, siree. The bad tempered diatribe then swerved to the plight of local law enforcement, who, my interlocutor alleged, were powerless to police a squatter camp in the North Bend vicinity, for lack of resources. Some believe that twice did a man from this homeless encampment invade a homestead in the community.

We fork over thousands in property taxes per annum, yet, as was being asserted, the police were without the necessary funds to fulfill the State’s only constitutional duty: protecting the people. Naturally, where the State fails to carry out its sacred duty, as is almost always the case, The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution instantiates the individual’s natural right to do exactly what the heroic homeowners did to safeguard life and property: hastened the intruder’s descent into hell.

Commensurate with the value this Washington-State locality places on limited authority and republican virtues—none at all—law enforcement is not even itemized in the property-tax bill issued.

The truth is that the lion’s share of our property taxes goes toward …

UPDATE I: The “wasteful monstrosity” discussed above was celebrated by the local newspaper’s intrepid reporters. It too is local in name only—for most “local newspapers” are corporately owned. In our case, the pabulum published weekly is by permission of The Seattle Times Co. When our local rag is not reporting on a theatre that will close, a cinema that is hiring, or a pizza place that’ll host “Raise the Dough for Seattle Children’s”—the newspaper simply parrots the partyline on everything. I know, because I line my parrot’s cage with its pages.